Mimas

Mimas is caught in the spotlight beneath Saturn's rings in this amazing view from Cassini. Notable is the brightened outermost edge of the A ring beyond the narrow Keeler gap and the periodic brightening of the thin, knotted F ring. Mimas is 398 kilometres across.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on 18 December 2004, at a distance of 2 million kilometres from Mimas and at a Sun-Mimas-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 105Â°. The image scale is about 12 kilometres per pixel. The image has been magnified by a factor of two and contrast enhanced to aid visibility.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.